Oaty Apple Crumble, use foraged fruit and it’s even cheaper
Sunday Lunch
DP and I often have a Sunday lunch at, erm, lunchtime, then in the evening we have a pudding, often a fruit crumble with custard or evaporated milk. I always used to make custard using dried powder and UHT milk. Then one day, having spotted value custard, I worked out the costs, and it is actually cheaper to buy it ready made. That was a bit of a surprise for someone who makes everything she can to keep costs down. So sometimes I use a tin of custard
DP’s favourites are apple or rhubarb or plum – hence our little apple and plum trees and our forest of rhubarb 🙂
The crumble mix is super easy to make, just a bit of light stirring.
I use this pyrex dish to make them in – I now have three of them, all from charity shops, and they are THE most useful things for 2 people. I use them for these crumbles, cauli and pasta cheese, savoury crumbles, pasta bakes etc etc. I make a 4 portion recipe and put half in each of two dishes and have the 2nd half the next day
This also helps with portion control as left to his own devices, DP would eat the leftovers and leave me with a little bit in the corner of the dish that isn’t even half a portion. He does this with the crumbles. Theoretically, they are 4 portions, but I serve up half, then the rest gets scoffed by DP on his way through the kitchen. All except the little bit in the corner. Makes me wish we had a dog to feed it to!
This particular recipe is for meal plan three, so I will use the quantities for that. There are a great many variations for fruit crumble, I will suggest some at the bottom.
Other possible crumbles
a sprinkle of any or all of sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds.
Almost any fruit will make a tasty crumble. As well as those below, how about apricot, cherry or peach. I’ve never tried pineapple – would that work do you think?
Apple
toasted, chopped almonds or toasted chopped pecans and cinnamon/mixed spice in the topping (mix in a tsp cinnamon/mixed spice and smell the mix, repeat until you can smell the spice), serve with cinnamon ice cream
This post has an easy recipe to make ice cream. For cinnamon ice cream, make the base recipe, then stir in cinnamon. Try a little to start with, stir well and smell and taste the mix. Does it taste of as much cinnamon as you would like? If not, add more and repeat
lemon zest and toasted hazlenuts in the crumble, serve with lemon ice cream
plain topping or with hazelnuts, stir a couple of cloves into the apple, serve with custard or cream
toasted walnuts in topping. serve with dark muscovado ice cream
Pear
toasted walnuts and demerara sugar in topping, serve with coffee ice cream
Plum
toasted walnuts and muscovado sugar in topping, and use wholemeal flour
Rhubarb
finely chopped ginger/stem ginger in the fruit or the topping, serve with ginger ice cream
orange zest in the topping mix or the fruit
Gooseberry
add sugar or a good splash of undiluted elderflower cordial, serve with elderflower ice cream
Mixed Fruit
A super simple, and seasonal, crumble is to use mincemeat. Simply tip a 400g sized jar of mincemeat in the dish and top with crumble mix. Delicious!
Jack Monroe has posted a delicous sounding Christmas crumble using mixed fruit and peel and tinned mandarins, I will definitely be trying that one – sounds super yummy
Ingredients
For the base
- 240 g apples about 3 fruits, 16p each, 48p
For the crumble topping
- 80 g flour value flour, doesn’t matter if s.r. or plain 45p/1.5kg, 2p
- 50 g sugar 65p/1kg, 3p
- 100 ml veg oil £1.09/litre, 11p
- 80 g oats the cheapest ones, 75p/1kg, 6p
Instructions
- Quarter the apples and remove the core, slice them up and put them in the dish.
- My husband doesn’t like the peel, but you can leave it on if you like, you get more apple. I like it unpeeled. No need for sugar
- Put all the topping ingredients in a bowl and stir them well. It will be quite a wet mixture. Spread it evenly over the fruit, doesn’t matter at all if the fruit shows through, it all melds together when cooked
- Cook in a medium oven for 40 minutes – it needs that long to cook the apples through.
Notes
Got a great recipe? How about submitting it to appear on Thrifty Lesley!
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That sounds good, nice mix of fruit.
We had a crumble this evening using up the last of the plums from our little trees.
Wow, this recipe came out amazing. I used a tin of peach slices and a couple of apples that needed using up, and it tasted fantastic.
I do have a veg crumble recipe that I use, it has various root veg and toms in it, with a cheesy topping. Your variations sound lovely, I always tend to do the same recipe when I do mine
Have you ever made savory crumble? Tomatoes, eggplant, courgette, summer squash, alone or in combination, some onion or garlic if you have it. (Some shops have canned ratatouille, this would be a good use for that). Top with unsweetened crumble topping, with a bit of herbs in. Sprinkle of cheese wouldn’t hurt either.
Another way would be with butternut or other orange squash. You could go sweet or savory with that!
Jo, oh good, another crumble to try!
We have an apple from the garden with raspberries from the freezer one tonight, yum
We had apple and (tinned) pineapple crumble once when unexpected visitors turned up and stayed to eat with us and everything needed to be stretched. It was really nice and it is still frugal with a 27p tin of pineapple from Asda.
Crummmblllle…Mmmmm!
Peach and pienaplle
S use the spellings. Was looking in the drawer my Nespresso card this monin – didn’t find it but did find my Ikea card, 10c and a razor 🙂
Hence ten bad tipping!
Phryne
:-))